Irvin Waller

Notes on the truth about reducing street gun violence

The implications are that sustained reductions in street gun violence are possible within a city such as Toronto within a year or so but require a smart combination of enforcement and prevention organized around a city wide strategic planning process.

Background

The Joyce Foundation has supported work by a group of US ¨Mayors against Illegal Guns¨ and the International Association of Chiefs of Police to identify action to reduce gun violence in the USA. Their conclusions have been taken from their website (www.joycefdn.org/Programs/GunViolence).

Less Law, More Order used international experience and authoritative sources - such as the World Health Organization and the US National Academy of Sciences - to identify what works and does not work to reduce crime and violence, including lethal violence on streets involving handguns. Irvin Waller has more than 30 years of experience in Canada and internationally working on ways to reduce violence, including collaborating with the US National Crime Prevention Council on an analysis of the reasons for the decline in violent crime in major cities in the USA in the 1990´s.

1. What has worked at city level to reduce gun violence on streets?

The Joyce Foundation notes:

Dramatic reduction in homicides, mostly by firearms, has been a major success story in the 1990´s in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Boston. Each city created aggressive strategies for breaking the nexus of gangs and guns and so brought their murder rates down hard. Although the rates are still lower than a decade ago-the numbers are starting to creep back up.

In 2005, an evaluation in the City of Chicago showed strong reductions in gun violence, when

" the Chicago police initiated Area Gun Teams to focus on gang members with guns, find gangs' weapons stashes, and investigate the sources.

" Project Safe Neighborhoods brought together police and other agencies in persuading ex-felons returning to the community to stay away from guns and to offer them job training and other alternatives.

Less Law, More Order notes:

The large reductions in lethal violence in US cities in the 1990´s were particularly associated with demographic changes, improvements in employment and exaggerated use of incarceration. Evaluations of the reductions of violent crime in New York City show a small contribution from tough law enforcement. However, the reductions in gun violence in Boston were quicker and likely more dramatic due to the deliberate strategy of the city.

The combination of ¨smart¨ policing and ¨smart¨ prevention achieved the dramatic reductions in homicide in Boston. The Boston PD engaged an academic to identify who was most involved in gang violence and so enable police to use current criminal, traffic, and drug laws to confront the men. At the same time, various community agencies increased services available to those ¨confronted¨ to complete school, get job training and become employed.

Evaluations of random control trials in the USA show that smart policing to seize handguns in small areas has reduced violent gun crime by 60%. Other experiments in the USA show that gun amnesties and buy back programs do not reduce violent crime in the months following the programs unless they are targeted to high crime areas.

Dramatic reductions in homicides in the city of Bogotá in Colombia occurred when municipal strategic planning identified the roots of violence and so deliberately limited access to alcohol, increased counseling to victims to avoid revenge killings, and reduced the availability of handguns by paying owners to turn them in.

2. What has worked at national level to reduce gun violence?

The Joyce Foundation does not comment.

Less Law, More Order notes:

Handguns are much more available in the USA than Canada and owned two thirds of the time in the USA for self protection. A comparison of police recorded rates of sexual assault, robbery and murder between Canada and the USA as well as between Vancouver and Seattle shows that rates of violence without handguns are similar whereas rates of handgun violence are much higher in the USA than Canada. The authoritative interpretation that availability of handguns increases violence is also confirmed by the International Crime Victim Survey.

3. Recommended strategies

The Joyce Foundation recommends:

A range of actions focused on stronger laws to control guns and training of police, such as

1. Requiring that all gun sales take place through licensed dealers with background checks
2. Mandating reporting of lost and stolen firearms
3. Restoring development and ¨problem oriented¨ funding (COPS) for local law enforcement and training police officers in tactics to lessen the possibility that a hostile situation will erupt in lethal violence

Less Law, More Order recommends:

A combination of comprehensive and sustained prevention strategies that tackle (i) why individuals are prone to violence, (ii) why they carry handguns, including for their personal safety, and (iii) measures focusing on availability of handguns, such as:

1. Sustained programs to tackle the roots of violence and so reduce the number of persons likely to be involved in violence, such as:
   1. Youth Inclusion Projects (YIP) and programs to decrease dropping out of school (Quantum) in Chapter 2
   2. Core curriculum courses on non-violent conflict resolution (4th R) in Chapter 3.
2. Strategic planning at the city level by an office to reduce crime to mobilize agencies such as schools, housing, social services and police around an analysis of the roots of violence and partnerships to tackle those roots in Chapter 7.
3. Actions such as those in Boston - but sustained - to combine smart policing action to remove illegal handguns and smart prevention offering young men ways to complete school and get jobs as in Chapters 5 and 7.
4. Sustained programs to assist victims of violence cope with their trauma and avoid violent acts of revenge as in chapters 6 and 7.
5. Sustained programs to combine reductions in violence with police actions to remove illegal handguns so that persons cease to need handguns to make them feel safer as in chapters 3 and 7.